"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Hazards of Grace

My falconry apprentice, Gary Moody of Santa Fe, (also Texas, Siberia not far north of Olgii, St John's) has published his first book of poetry, at... let us say, my age. It is NOT an apprentice work; rather, the work of a seasoned poet who hadn't published a book yet. My blurb gives a hint:

"In a time when so much poetry is weak tea, as minimalist as haiku but without that compressed density, Gary Moody's comes on like a rare old bourbon, rich and complex and burning like fire. Its locales range from Texas to Siberia, its atmospheres from the desert to the ocean to the bottom of a mine; it encompasses subjects as unusual as horsebreaking and falconry, and creatures from coyotes to frail butterflies. Its view of the mortality of everything is unflinching and sometimes startling, even as it celebrates life in its infinite varieties. Hazards of Grace is the most original poetic debut I have read in years."

But my spontaneous letter to him after I read the ms might be more indicative...

"My favorites on first reading: "Fire Damp"-- simply HOLY SHIT perfect. A Steve Earle song from before he got solemn and ideological...

"The requiem for Yuri the driver (red, red, Krasnoy, tolling like a bell...)-- like the preceding a short story compressed for a greater power to weight ratio. (I often say James McMurtry does everything his father does in a 600 page story in a 2 minute song-- these are.... just so).

"Two above simply BEST. But also

"Most anything with horses; "Spine"

"How you play on "story" & "story" 9- 11

" "Willing"

" "Boneyard of Stolen Cattle"-- favorite New Mexican pome

"The lines on the Cooper's hawk in "Solace":

"The hawk's eye and the scaled eye of the dove each mock the frailty of our leashed trespassinto wildness..."